Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 85: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE WINGS OF THE SNOW. It was a perilous journey, in very truth. Ku-ro had not taken a hundred steps down the long slope ere he realized this to the full, for the snow, masking the surface of the underlying ice, hid from view the slight irregularities of the glacier’s face, and slips and falls were frequent. Besides, his hands and knees were yet sore, though he noted with satisfaction that they showed signs of healing, and his ankle still pained from the wrenching it had received. - . And how was he to get food? No living thing besides himself trod these mighty wastes! _ Father; He would not call a man and then desert him! Water lacked, but that was no matter, for Ku-ro knew not the superstition that snow increases thirst, so he ate freely of it, and his thirst was slacked. One comfort there was, the storm had brought warmth in its train, and though the ice and snow were cold, the air was pleasant. So Ku-ro pressed on, plowing through the snow, seeking always the lower levels, working always downward toward the distant valleys, where he knew he could find food. For two days he traveled thus, but pres- ently the effect of his one, gorging meal passed off, and he found himself growing. weaker; stumbling more often, rousing him- self with greater and greater difficulty from rest, sitting down with ever increasing fre- quency, for that his trembling legs would not support him. Several days passed thus, Ku-ro still _ struggling onward, and now he began to see visions. Food was the one obsessing thought which filled his mind, and about this all his dreams by night and his visions by day were centered. Food! Had he ever eaten his fill? he ever in days past known what it meant to have his belly full? He doubted it; looking back, he could not remember the time when this ghastly feeling of emptiness, this agonizing pain, had not been with him. One comfort, though; the pain was pass- ing. The terrible agony of the first two days, when it seemed as though a wild beast gnawed and tore and clawed at his vitals—this was no longer with him, but in its place a sense of vacancy, of hollow- But he decided to trust the Great ~ * Had 651 ness, a feeling that he must lay both hands on his stomach and double over—this he ~ had; and then that awful weakness, that dizziness, that swimming of the head, that failing vision! These things tortured him beyond words, and to make it worse he could see and smell the cooking-fires of the Ta-an. He knew in the back of his mind that the Valley of. the Ta-an lay many days’ journey distant, yet could he see the fires, the pots bubbling, and smell the roasting meat, till the water dripped from his half-open mouth. And at night he dreamed of food. All night long, from the closing of his eyes till he opened them at dawn, the thought of food was ever with him. Once he woke in the middle of the night, weeping bitterly in his disappointment, for though in his dreams he was never able to eat of the feasts spread before him, yet on this one occasion he had’ managed by desperate efforts to get a handful of berries into his mouth—and the unspeakable joy, the utter delight, had wakened him! Finally came the day when youth and strength and courage and a desperate re- solve could no longer bearaip against starva- - tion, against the exhaustion of long-contin- ued labor without food. For some time Ku-ro had been marching on sheer’ nerve; his vision had been blurred by strange flashes of light, by whirls of color dancing before his eyes. | Vainly had he striven to brush them away that he might see where to set his feet; ‘they persisted, and in consequence he had many times stumbled and fallen, often where the winds had driven away the snow, so that he fell with numbing SHOCKS on the bare ice. At last, toward the close of the day, as he struggled blindly on, reeling and stag- gering, he drove unseeing into a drift which lay knee-deep before him. His feet caught, he pitched forward and lay still. After a time he strove to rise, the indomitable spirit still urging him on, but though he got to his knees he could not lift himself further. He tried to press forward on all fours, but the snow hampered and blocked him, and he was forced to give over the attempt; pitch- ing headlong, he lay full-length in the snow. - CONRIC NOOK CO